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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'We were protested.',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/08/10.jpg" alt="Blocking out the hate" class="framed-centred-image" width="800" height="480"/>
<section id="diet">
	<h2>Dietary intake</h2>
	<p>
		For breakfast, I had 83 grams of cereal and 116 grams of soy milk.
		I ate a cookie, 90 grams of apple sauce, 74 grams of oatmeal, and 506 grams of pretzels for lunch.
		For dinner, I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="pride">
	<h2>Pride festival</h2>
	<p>
		At the $a[EUGLUG] meeting this Thursday, I was told about a parade on the same day as the festival: today.
		I was told it&apos;d be at noon, and told it&apos;d be on Oak Street near the courthouse.
		I couldn&apos;t find any information on that parade online, but I found a march today, and figured it was what I was looking for.
		It wasn&apos;t at noon though, and wasn&apos;t near the courthouse, so I thought I&apos;d been given incorrect information.
		I wasn&apos;t going to go, but my fellow $a[EUGLUG] member pointed out that the group that was protesting us queers - the Proud Boys - uses a strategy that works great when unopposed, but totally falls apart against any sort of resistance.
		With that, they need to be met with resistance every time.
		Not only that, but so far, every time they&apos;ve had one of these protests, they&apos;ve been <strong>*vastly*</strong> outnumbered by queers and queer supporters protesting <strong>*them*</strong>.
		We need to keep it that way, so it was worth my attendance.
		I later learned of a Nazi gathering at the Park Blocks, so maybe that was the event I&apos;d been told about, so I guess I missed that after all.
		I thought the event I was supposed to go to was one of ours though, that the Proud Boys were planning to crash.
		I didn&apos;t realise that <strong>*we*</strong> were the crashers.
	</p>
	<p>
		I guess I misinterpreted the information I found, as I thought it was supposed to start at 09:00, but it was actually starting at 10:00.
		Also, I wasn&apos;t sure how long it would take to get there, I I got there almost an hour early compared to when I thought the march was, so I was actually almost two hours early.
		I got to talking with someone else that&apos;d arrive way early though too, though they&apos;d arrived early because of the limitations of bus-riding.
		They could arrive way early, or arrive five minutes before the march.
		They opted for way early.
		A bit after the organiser got there, some Proud Boys walked by and asked if we knew when the rally near the courthouse was going down.
		We were meeting at a queer bar though.
		They asked us <strong>*at*</strong> a queer bar.
		They knew very well who we were.
		I suspect they actually knew when their group was getting together, and was just trying to assert their presence to us.
	</p>
	<p>
		Our group had a police escort.
		We walked through the streets with rainbow flags and clothing, and police on motorcycles led the way, while other motorcycle officers parked to physically block off the roads used by the march from incoming traffic.The police are on our side.
		The end stretch of the march was on sidewalk, so we weren&apos;t preventing traffic at that point, and quite a few cars honked in show of support for us.
		I don&apos;t think most people care.
		We&apos;re here.
		We&apos;re queer.
		And most people are somewhat used to it.
		We&apos;re not some big threat, and they know it.
	</p>
	<p>
		At this point, I was getting pretty hungry.
		I&apos;d come way too early, and the bar was out of both of their only two vegan menu items.
		I&apos;d planned to get something from Cornbread Cafe, who had a stand at the festival last year.
		They weren&apos;t here this year though.
		That was disappointing.
		I ended up eating a cookie, 90 grams of apple sauce, 74 grams of oatmeal, and some pretzels I&apos;d brought.
		I brought a sandwich too, and I should have had that instead of the pretzels, but didn&apos;t.
		I ended up having that for dinner.
	</p>
	<p>
		Fairly soon, a protest group from some church showed up at the festival trying to get us to stop being queer.
		Yeah.
		Right.
		Like that&apos;s going to work.
		They were small in number though, and even though only a fraction of people were even paying attention to them, that small group of people on our side more than outnumbered them.
		The person I&apos;d met waiting outside the bar and someone else held up a transgender flag blocking out their main sign, and people took turns covering up all the signs with various pro-queer paraphernalia, including other flags and rainbow umbrellas.
		The police kept them from going beyond the outskirts of the event, so anyone not wanting to deal with these people didn&apos;t have to.
		I probably should have stayed with the group letting these people know we weren&apos;t taking their crap, but a vocal minority of us were being so loud and not even letting them speak really, so there wasn&apos;t anything I was needed there for.
		I kept checking back on things, and when there wasn&apos;t so much yelling, I held polite conversation with them and tried to get them to see what they were actually doing.
		It wasn&apos;t effective, but I think it was more effective than the other people yelling at them.
		When we yell at them instead of politely talking to them (or ignoring them), I think it cements in their minds that we&apos;re the bad people.
		They&apos;re under the delusion that we believe in their version of their god, and that we just suppress that knowledge because we love to sin.
		That was one of the things they actually told me.
		I think when we yell at them to go away, it just makes them think we&apos;re trying to keep them from forcing us to acknowledge that knowledge of their god.
		It&apos;s like plugging your ears and yelling &quot;NUH NUH NUH NUH NUH!!&quot;.
		Politely explaining that they&apos;re wrong, while it won&apos;t convince them that they&apos;re wrong, is more likely to get them to see that their &quot;help&quot; isn&apos;t effective.
		I don&apos;t think they&apos;re interested in learning though, seeing as they kept trying to use logical facilities to trick us all and twist what we said.
		They left about two hours before the event ended, and I left about half an hour after that.
		My shoulders were sore from all the stuff I have to lug around when I go out, including water and my bike pump.
		And I wasn&apos;t needed there any more.
	</p>
	<p>
		Oh, and by the way, this church didn&apos;t even label their signs to let us know who they were.
		They were too cowardly for that.
		But someone recognised them as being a certain Christian church from Portland.
		I forget which one, unfortunately, and when I asked someone, they were unsure themself.
		Meanwhile, we had at least three Christian churches with actual booths at the event, in support of the community.
		I&apos;m not pro-religion, by any means.
		However, we can clearly see that not only does religion not have to be opposed to the queer community, but not even Christianity specifically has to be opposed to us.
	</p>
	<p>
		One person mentioned that they don&apos;t mind the adult protesters, but they hate that they&apos;re indoctrinating their children by having them protest too.
		I really hate that sort of attitude.
		How many pro-queer people brought their own children to the pride event?
		People think their views are correct.
		they try to instil these &quot;correct&quot; view into their children from an early age.
		Both sides do that.
		The problem isn&apos;t the attempting to pass your values onto your offspring.
		The problem is the attitudes, beliefs, and values these people hod to begin with.
		Adult or child, these beliefs are not okay.
		I can&apos;t help but be reminded of something Bill Nye said.
		He said it was okay to believe in creationism and to deny science, but that the world needs scientists, and you need to teach your children to believe in science.
		But if you don&apos;t believe in science yourself, then to teach your children to believe in it would be, from your perspective, to teach them lies.
		Why would you do that?
		Of <strong>*course*</strong> you&apos;d teach your children to believe what you do, because you believe those beliefs are correct!
		You think you&apos;re doing the right thing, so you teach your children to do as you do.
	</p>
	<p>
		Between checking in on the group protesting the protesters and wandering the event, I chanced upon a singer that caught my ear.
		I sat down and stayed for the remainder of the show, and it was a lot of fun.
		Additionally though, it was educational.
		I learned that the pride events aren&apos;t just intended to be fun gatherings.
		They&apos;re a continuation of the first pride event, which was of course the Stonewall riots.
		We come to these events to show that we&apos;re still around, and we&apos;re not going anywhere.
		Again, it&apos;s these people protesting us that are why we&apos;re here.
		I should have kept my focus on them.
		Next year, if they come back, I should work on keeping my eye on the goal.
	</p>
	<p>
		I picked up three gratis tee-shirts.
		One was another $a[HIV] alliance shirt.
		I&apos;ve got three of those with different designs now.
		They give them out to anyone willing to take an $a[HIV] test.
		They want people to know they have it, so they can do their best to avoid spreading it.
		I&apos;m clean though.
		I&apos;m always clean.
		I&apos;m a virgin that doesn&apos;t handle drugs or use needles.
		Another tee simply says &quot;I AM&quot;.
		I am what?
		I exist?
		It&apos;s just white with black text, too, not rainbowed, so it&apos;s not saying we queers exist.
		It&apos;s just saying the individual wearer exists, I think.
		The third was from a fast food chain.
		I&apos;m not sure when I&apos;d wear it.
		I don&apos;t tend to wear logos unless I truely support the group, like I do the $a[HIV] Alliance.
		It does have rainbow French fries on it though, so I&apos;ll keep it around for a rainy day.
		I bought a beaded bracelet made mostly of lava rock with a sun charm, but mostly tried not to splurge too much.
		I&apos;m on a budget here.
		Oh, yeah, I also bought a non-binary flag.
		I&apos;ve been meaning to get one for over a year now, to replace the rainbow flag Summer gave me.
		While the rainbow flag is more recognisable, the non-binary flag is more fitting for me, especially if she&apos;s going to be coming over when I&apos;m not here as she does.
		(Though I haven&apos;t seen evidence of her dropping by lately.)
	</p>
	<p>
		I was more tired than I thought, but the time I got home.
		I thought I&apos;d take a quick rest, and ended up actually falling asleep for several hours!
		I woke up in time to finish up my tasks for the night before midnight, including writing up this journal entry and getting my discussion post in, but if I&apos;d known I was actually going to fall asleep, I would have also run my Minetest node-grinder while I napped.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			I really enjoyed reading your post, and you covered everything in a clean and easy-to-grasp way.
			I did have one point I disagree with you on though.
		</p>
		<p>
			I wouldn&apos;t say that computers are less sophisticated than the human eye.
			Quite the contrary.
			The model that the computer has to work with is different though.
			They have different information available to them.
			Rays come out from the camera, do any bouncing needed to simulate the path of light, and head back to the light source.
			As you mentioned, this is the exact opposite of what happens with the human eye, or the eyes of any of our fellow animals.
			However, there&apos;s a key difference in models.
			In the computer-generated model, like you said, there would be infinite rays if we started at the light source.
			The computer has the entire model, and would need to track all those rays.
			On the other hand, there are a finite number of rays that would need to extend from the camera due to the finite number of pixels in the image, and this backtracking allows the computer to only process the rays that it would actually have a use for anyway.
			It&apos;s an optimisation.
			Here, the computer is actually being <strong>*very*</strong> sophisticated, and not performing unnecessary labour.
			With the human eye though, the eye doesn&apos;t know where any of the rays are.
			It only knows about rays that strike it.
			We can see this too when we deal with digital cameras.
			Digital cameras are often times <strong>*much*</strong> more sophisticated than eyes.
			However, the camera isn&apos;t able to know about rays or their paths, and can only work with the light that actually strikes the camera&apos;s photon receptor.
			A really high-end camera can be much more sophisticated than a low-end computer running graphical simulations too.
			However, this difference in model - that is, whether the scene is known entirely to the machine or only can be observed from a particular point - determines how the image must be produced.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="Minetest">
	<h2>Minetest</h2>
	<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_3.0/minetest.net./weblog/2019/08/10.png" alt="Lighting errors" class="framed-centred-image" width="1024" height="600"/>
	<p>
		I didn&apos;t really play Minetest today except to start and stop my automated leaf-grinding.
		I noticed an odd lighting error in one of the caves my mineshaft passes through though.
		Placing and removing nodes didn&apos;t seem to clear it up, but when I was building back up to reset the grinder, the error had been corrected by the engine.
	</p>
	<p>
		I think I&apos;m going to put off installing the ladders.
		I&apos;ll instead keep no more than a chest of unsifted leaves on hand to keep going up and down in the mineshaft for the time being.
		That way, I can focus use of my wood on building out the bridge and trying to get somewhere new.
		Before I depart the island for good though, I&apos;ll need to retrieve those leaves, so I&apos;ll need to install the ladders or kill myself at the bottom of the shaft after having converted all the leaves into saplings, abandoning the saplings in the process, and leaving them with my corpse.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
